The Ellery Queen series of films were strictly B movies but were very popular nonetheless.

Eddie Quillan does a pretty good performance as the wise cracking young detective.

A complicated mystery with a surprise ending.

The musical score is fine and sets the moods of various scenes competently but is sometimes too loud.

Worth watching for an hour...

Annoying lead character, intrusive music, dull mystery = a tedious piece.

When I read the other reviews before watching it, I thought maybe they were being a bit harsh. After watching it, I realize they were not unreasonable. It is a watch-able film. It's fairly entertaining. However, I was bored often during those 50-some minutes. The music (mostly at the beginning of the film) is grating. The acting isn't the best, but was okay. If you've watched any small-town productions of plays, the acting is of about the same quality - meaning its enjoyable enough. The film is worth watching once if you need something fluffy and light to pass time, but definitely not something that most people would watch twice.

Enjoyable

I liked this light-hearted who-done-it more the second time I watched it. Murder in a locked room and the theft of a fabulously valuable stamp thrust Ellery Queen and his police inspector father onto the scene. The young Ellery is played by Eddie Quillan, supported by an able cast that includes the eternal hotel manager, Franklin Pangborn. The mystery element works, but the complicated explanation of how the deed was done is really farfetched. (Something that Agatha Christi was also guilty of on occasion.) However, this was what '30s audiences expected and enjoyed, in the same way more recent audiences got a kick out of MacGyver's impossible exploits. If you like murder mysteries and shaggy-dog stories, this one will keep you entertained for an hour.

This movie is . skippableIt isn't bad, but it isn't among the bestest movies.

I liked it, despite the music. It wasn't bad, just not good and a little to loud at times. Just to pass the time, a cute movie.

The Divx AVI was coming across at phone line speeds.
The on-site player stopped and started a million times before the credits were over. I never actually saw it.

The most enjoyable aspect of this movie is the interplay between Ellery Queen and Charlotte Temple, the owner of the Mandarin stamp. The worst is the music. The story is a clunker. I found myself getting anxious for the end, and it's only 53 minutes long.

I downloaded the DivX file, which has actually been encoded as a mpeg-4 with mp3 audio. There are some missing frames and some wow in the audio, but it's otherwise OK.